Last Slice

Maybe this will make us all feel a little bit less guilty about cheating on our diets every once in a while, when the comfort-food urge strikes. Olympic athletes — those paragons of health, who often must stick to a strict nutritional regimen for optimal sport performance — enjoy cheat meals, too.

We know this because both the Boston Globe and Time magazine apparently asked a host of U.S. Olympic athletes about their go-to cheat-day foods — I guess because we all want to know it’s not just us and that even the strong are weak?

Or maybe it’s about not weakness, but rather balance. That’s the perspective offered by the U.S. Women’s Hockey Team’s Hilary Knight, who enjoys occasionally indulging in cheeseburgers, fries and cheese curds: “We’re these crazy athletes with these athlete bodies and stuff, but it’s just important to feed the other side of it, and if there’s a piece of cake there, have the piece of cake,” she told the Globe. “You earned it. You only live once.”

Words to live (and eat) by!

So, now that we know we’re good with the cheat-eating, here, for additional inspiration, are a bunch of other U.S. Olympic athletes’ favorite-food guilty pleasures, as unearthed by the Globe and Time:

Aja Evans (Bobsledder): Pizza, hot dogs, sushi and, right after a race, her favorite European chocolate bar and “sour apple rings,” she told the Globe.